Month: February 2007

A government report indicates to clean up fewer than half of the leaky
underground storage tanks in the nation it would cost billions of
dollars. But the Bush administration budget only calls for millions.
Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A government report indicates to clean up fewer than half of the leaky
underground storage tanks in the nation it would cost billions of
dollars. But the Bush administration budget only calls for millions.
Lester Graham reports:

Leaking underground storage tanks of gasoline or other hazardous
liquids can contaminate drinking water and soil. There are 117,000
known leaks from underground storage tanks across the nation.

A Government Accountability Office report indicates to clean up just
half that number would cost 12 billion dollars. The Bush
administration has requested less than 73 million dollars in the budget
currently before Congress.

The chair of the House Energy and Commerce committee, John Dingell,
calls the Bush request disgraceful and inadequate. But in the last
budget, Congress only appropriated 70 million to clean up leaky
underground storage tanks.

States across the nation expect to discover more than 16,000 new leaks
in the next five years. That could mean the current government funding
of clean-ups will never catch up with the actual number of leaky
underground storage tanks.

Transcript

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new rule regulating
mercury emissions from cement kilns is being challenged by both sides.
As Tracy Samilton reports, the cement industry says the rule goes too
far. Environmentalists say it doesn’t go far enough:

The rule regulates mercury emissions from new cement kilns only. The
EPA doesn’t think cement kilns are that big of a factor in mercury
pollution, but the EPA’s estimate is based on voluntary disclosure by
kiln operators. Some kilns were found to be emitting ten times what
they’d been claiming.

EarthJustice Attorney James Pew says he’s skeptical that the mercury
emissions are as low as the EPA thinks they are:

“There’s strong reason to believe that it’s a lot worse than that, in
fact it could be off by an order of magnitude.”

Meanwhile, the cement industry is challenging the EPA’s requirement
that new kilns install mercury-scrubbing technology. Industry officials
say more study is needed to show that it works.

Transcript

Whole Foods and Wild Oats are the nation’s best-known names in organic
grocers. Many a mom and pop health food store has fallen over the
past decade as those big-players have moved into towns across the
country.

Between them, they’ve opened about 300 stores, providing one-stop
shopping for all the health-conscious consumers’ needs,
everything from fresh produce and seafood to ready-made meals to
cleaning supplies.

But as more people want to buy natural and organic foods, more
mainstream stores, from Safeway to Wal-Mart Super Centers, want some of the
action. Economists say natural foods stores have been losing market
share to those national grocery chains.

Whole Foods says buying Wild Oats will boost its presence in
Florida, the Rockies, and the Pacific Northwest.

For the Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Scientists warn that we’re in the middle of a mass extinction. Frogs,
toads and other amphibians are dying off at an alarming rate. Rebecca
Williams reports a group of scientists wants to build an ark to stop
the extinctions:

Transcript

Scientists warn that we’re in the middle of a mass extinction. Frogs,
toads and other amphibians are dying off at an alarming rate. Rebecca
Williams reports a group of scientists wants to build an ark to stop
the extinctions:

In the last few decades, hundreds of amphibian species have gone
extinct. And several thousand more are on the verge of extinction.
One major threat is a killer fungus that’s wiping them out. Other
threats are habitat destruction and pollution.

A group called Amphibian Ark has announced a 40 million dollar plan.
They want to build special facilities at zoos and aquariums around the
world to take in endangered amphibians and keep them alive.

Kevin Zippel is the group’s amphibian program officer:

“The amphibian extinction crisis is probably the greatest species
conservation challenge in the history of humanity in terms of the
number of species in one group that’s being impacted.”

Zippel says putting frogs and toads into zoos is not a solution. But
he says he hopes it will buy time for more research… and eventually
get the animals re-established in the wild.

Related Links

This audio postcard captures that moment as a kid when sledding down a hill is the ultimate thrill ride. (Photo by Lester Graham)

There’s a lot of talk about the effects of global warming. But on a
recent frigid night, kids were thinking only of the cold and the thrill
of sledding down a hill. Producer Kyle Norris squeezed into the back of
a couple of sleds with the kids. She has this audio postcard
of the experience:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/norris_022607.mp3

Transcript

There’s a lot of talk about the effects of global warming. But on a
recent frigid night, kids were thinking only of the cold and the thrill
of sledding down a hill. Producer Kyle Norris squeezed into the back of
a couple of sleds with the kids. She has this audio postcard
of the experience:

“My name is Kayli Mills and I’m twelve years old. Right now we’re
sledding and we’re actually snowboarding because last year we didn’t
really get to do much. It’s dark right now and it’s really fun to do it
in the dark not only is the hill clear, but um, and it’s quiet and
everything but it’s just really fun when you really can’t see much.”

“We’re getting on the sled and you want to sit how it’s most
comfortable to you because you don’t want to fall off, for sure,
especially with two people. Um, I’m sitting just on my butt but with my
legs hanging off. But I’m going to go on my knees in a second when we
take off, just doing this so that the sled doesn’t take off on its
own.”

(Sounds of sledding down the hill)

“Isn’t that fun? Go C.J.!”

“My name is C.J. and I’m nine years old. I smell snow and woods and
we’re at the bottom of Slauson Hill ’cause we just went down and it’s
really dark out and the clouds are white and the sky it blue. Well,
it’s creepy kind of cause, cause it’s a really steep hill.”

(Sounds of the sled thrown down on snow)

“We just sat down and we’ll probably go pretty fast but I don’t know.”

(Sounds of sledding)

“That was fun. That was really fun.”

(Kayli): “Definitely the wind in your hair is the best part….”

(C.J.): “It makes your cheek red when you go down like about five times
cause the wind blows into your cheeks really hard.”

(Kayli): “I’d say that if you look at the sky it’s very, very
beautiful I think even more than the day could even be. I mean, there’s
not really a sunset but you can kind of see the colors fading in from a
blue to a pink a yellow to a blue it’s almost like a rainbow but the
whole clouds are just a rainbow, dark skies. It’s very pretty right
now.”

(Sound of sled fades out).

Host tag: Those were the sounds of Kayli, C.J., and Austin braving the cold for
an evening sled on Slauson Hill in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Wildlife officials want to eliminate the European mute swan so it doesn't compete with native birds. (Photo by Christina Shockley)

Controversy over what to do about a non-native swan has taken an
unusual turn. One state that was going to kill all of its mute swans
will now give some of them a short lease on life. It’s going to let
people “adopt” the wild birds. Christina Shockley has the story:

Transcript

Controversy over what to do about a non-native swan has taken an
unusual turn. One state that was going to kill all of its mute swans
will now give some of them a short lease on life. It’s going to let
people “adopt” the wild birds. Christina Shockley has the story:

Mute swans are large, gorgeous, white birds. They were brought to the
U.S. from Europe in the 1800s to beautify parks and estates. The swans
were meant to be kept in captivity, but they escaped, and since, the
numbers have skyrocketed along the Great Lakes and Eastern seaboard.

So, like in other areas, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
has come up with a plan. The state wants to shoot all the mute swans,
but this doesn’t sit well with a lot of people.

Pat Kujawa is one of them. Kujawa is sitting in her home on Phantom
Lake. The area is home to about 85% of Wisconsin’s mute swans. Each
summer for several years, Kujawa’s family has bonded with the mute
swans. She sees the birds as neighbors on the lake.

She holds a photo album full of pictures of the swans and her kids as
they grew up:

“We have pictures of our son Kyle swimming with them, and he’s probably
about I would say 8 or 9 years old, and again other pictures like that,
showing the parents standing back, and all of the babies coming up and
taking bread right out of Kyle’s hands. Sort of suggests that perhaps
the DNR characterization of them being aggressive is somewhat
misguided, or at least it’s what they want people to hear.”

Wildlife officials say the mute swans ARE aggressive, especially during
the nesting and breeding season. They say the mutes push native birds
out of their habitat and upset aquatic life by uprooting vegetation
along the shore.

Officials also say the mute swan was posing a problem as the state
worked to re-introduce the native trumpeter swan. Their numbers have
just recovered.

But because of protests from people like Kujawa, the state government
says it will temporarily modify its mute swan eradication plan. What
they’re doing might seem a little unusual. The state is going to let
people in three counties “adopt,” or sponsor, as many mute swans as they
want.

Erin Celello is from the Department of Natural Resources. She says
people won’t have to bring the birds in the house to live like a cat or
dog, but she says they will have to get the swans fixed:

“They will be able to apply for a permit, to capture a swan from the
wild, and they will be required to neuter that swan, and re-release
that swan into the wild.”

Celello says that will keep the birds from breeding, and the state
won’t shoot the birds when they see them:

“We felt that this is kind of a win-win for everyone. As an agency, we
are still upholding our share of what has become a national mute swan
control policy, while at the same time, allowing for citizens who have
formed emotional attachments to these birds, to keep those birds
around, and keep them on their landscape.”

Celello says the state’s goal is still to kill all of the mute swans. She
says officials will shoot the mutes that aren’t wearing neck tags that
show the birds have been spayed or neutered. And obviously the swans
that have the surgery won’t be having babies. One vet says the spaying
or neutering procedure could cost between 150 and 250 dollars per bird,
and Grace Graham says that might be difficult for her to afford.
Graham is Pat Kujawa’s neighbor on Phantom Lake.

The 70-year-old retired school teacher has been swimming with, and
feeding, the mute swans for years. She says the mute swans should just
be left alone and that it’s wrong to eliminate a species. But she
knows, ultimately, if it’s impossible for the birds to reproduce, the
swans will be gone at some point:

“I don’t want to even think about our lake not having any mute swans on
it. All this summer, the last time I swam with them before the water
got cold I thought, Grace, this is the last time you’re going to get to
do this. Last time you fed them, last time you do all of these things.
It’s kind of like a death thing.”

Related Links

Overuse of salt can cause damage to concrete, steel and the environment. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Liquid salt (brine) works more quickly than road salt and ultimately means less salt in the environment. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Specialized equipment is used to clear sidewalks and roadways better, while using lower-salt solutions to melt ice. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Mountains of salt are dumped on highways. Some road crews are working to use salt more efficiently. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Each year about 118,000 people are hurt and 1,300 people are killed on
the roads during snowy and icy conditions. So, snowplows hit the
roads, scraping snow and ice off the surface… and spreading
incredible amounts of salt on highways, streets and roads to help keep
them clear. Lester Graham reports there’s some concern about the long-
term effects of all that salt:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/graham_022607.mp3

Transcript

Each year about 118,000 people are hurt and 1,300 people are killed on
the roads during snowy and icy conditions. So, snowplows hit the
roads, scraping snow and ice off the surface… and spreading
incredible amounts of salt on highways, streets and roads to help keep
them clear. Lester Graham reports there’s some concern about the long-
term effects of all that salt:

This dump truck is getting ready for a load of salt for a coming
winter storm. Salt helps make icy roads safer. It helps prevent
people from slipping and falling on sidewalks. And… it’s pretty
cheap. But there are problems with salt. Salt pollutes and salt
corrodes.

Mark Cornwell has spent a good deal of his career trying to convince
highway crews that there are better ways to keep things safe and reduce
how much salt is dumped on roads and sidewalks:

“Salt basically damages just about everything it comes in contact
with. Salt moves through concrete and attacks structural steel,
bridges, roads, parking structures; it eats the mortar out of bricks
and foundations. It damages limestone, you know, just on and on and
on.”

So, even though salt is cheap, the damage it does costs a lot. It’s a
hidden cost that’s seldom calculated. Imagine the cost of having to
replace a bridge five years early because the structure is weakened by
salt. And then there are your direct costs: trying to keep salt
washed off your vehicle, and still seeing rust attack your car.

Cornwell says there are some cities and road commissioners working to
reduce the amount of salt spread on the roads. But in most places, the
political pressure to get the salt trucks out early, and laying it on
thick to keep drivers happy, outweighs any concerns about trying to
reduce the salt:

“I’m sure the public expects full attention to snow and ice. And they
have absolutely no understanding, however, of what it costs to provide
that.”

Nobody thought a lot about the damage salt was causing until the last
couple of decades. In a few places, the people responsible for keeping
the roads and walkways safe have been trying to reduce the amount of
salt they use and still keep public safety tops on the list of
concerns:

“So, this is our shops. The brine-maker is right here.”

Marvin Petway is showing me some of the tools in his arsenal to reduce
how much salt is used and still keep things safe. He works at the
University of Michigan, where there’s a goal to cut the amount of salt
used in winter in half. What they’ve learned is using innovative ways
of putting down salt can actually help melt snow and ice faster. One
way is to mix it with water to get the chemicals in salt working
a little more quickly:

“Why use 5 pounds of rock salt when you can use 2 gallons of liquid
salt? We’re able to get better coverage, quicker, better cost, and
we’re putting the material that is effective in reducing ice build-up
directly to the area where we don’t want ice located.”

The crews trying to reduce salt use computer assisted spreaders to
measure out only the salt needed, they mix in less corrosive chemicals
that make salt brine more effective, and even just wetting the salt in
dump trucks with chemicals all help to melt snow and ice faster and in
the end use a lot less salt.

Nothing is going to replace salt altogether, but those efforts can add
up to a lot less salt. That means less destruction of infrastructure.

But there are more reasons for reducing salt than the damage to
roadways and parking decks. Salt also damages the environment:

Mark Cornwell first noticed the effects of salt because he was a
horticulturalist. He’d work all spring, summer and fall planting
shrubs, make the grass green, tending beds of flowers. Then the winter
would come:

“Unfortunately what we were doing in six months of winter was
undoing everything we did in the other six months of the year.
If you’re going to get ahead, you’ve got to solve the problem
and in my mind, that was misuse of salt.”

Use too much salt and it kills plants. And it turns out the cost of
using all that cheap salt could be even greater than anyone guessed.
For decades, it’s been assumed that rain washed away most of the salt, but
studies in Ontario find that a lot of the salt doesn’t get washed
away.

Instead, a good deal of it is percolating down into shallow aquifers.
Researchers predict that in the future we’ll start find salt is getting
into the groundwater that supplies many of the wells where we get our
drinking water.

The government concedes it can’t get rid of a pest that’s been killing
trees. But it has a program that’s slowing its spread. Fred Kight
reports federal and state officials are using a pesticide on the tree-
killing gypsy moth in 10 states:

Transcript

The government concedes it can’t get rid of a pest that’s been killing
trees. But it has a program that’s slowing its spread. Fred Kight
reports federal and state officials are using a pesticide on the tree-
killing gypsy moth in 10 states:

The Slow the Spread Project is run by the US Forest Service and Donna
Leonard is the program manager. She says they focus on hindering the
gypsy moth’s advance into new territory:

“…And for the past five or six years, we’ve been holding spread at
about two to three miles per year, compared to 13 miles per year, which
is the rate it was spreading before we started.”

The tactic employed against the gypsy moth in the spring is aerial
spraying of pesticide, and for the most part they use a naturally
occurring soil bacteria commonly referred to as BTK.

A Sierra Club activist says BTK is far preferable to synthetic
pesticides but it can be a problem because it can kill other bugs, too.

For the Environment Report, I’m Fred Kight.

Related Links

Waste from former industrial plants can pollute some of the nation’s
most natural areas, including state and national park land. Brad
Linder reports that even a treasured historic site made famous by George
Washington is at risk:

Transcript

Waste from former industrial plants can pollute some of the nation’s
most natural areas, including state and national park land. Brad
Linder reports that even a treasured historic site made famous by George
Washington is at risk:

General George Washington and his troops braved cold weather and
starvation for six months in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. The site’s now
a national historic park. But for much of the 20th century, part of the
site was also home to an asbestos manufacturing plant.

Attorney Andy Hartzell is with the state of Pennsylvania, which recently
reached an agreement with the federal government to split the 11
million dollar cleanup cost. He says just because the site holds
historic significance doesn’t mean it was safe from industrial waste:

“Since the industrial revolution our country’s had an industrialized
society, and standards were different in the 1800s than they were in
the 1900s, than they are today. So, sometimes things like this happen.”

Much of the asbestos has already been buried on site, and removing it
would be more dangerous than leaving it in place. Only the asbestos on
the surface will be moved.

Related Links

Volunteers across the country gather samples and data for biologists who don't have the resources to get into the field. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Mary Bajcz examines a specimen jar to see how many stoneflies she's gathered so far. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Rochelle Breitenbach uses a fine-mesh net to gather organisms from a creek. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Mary Bajcz is sorting through leaf debris to find stonefly larvae. Stoneflies are a good indicator of high water quality. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Most of us assume the government is keeping track of environmental
issues such as pollution in water. In reality, most pollution problems
are first detected by citizens. Lester Graham reports in some parts of
the nation, volunteers step in to make sure their local streams and
lakes are clean:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/graham_021907.mp3

Transcript

Most of us assume the government is keeping track of environmental
issues such as pollution in water. In reality, most pollution problems
are first detected by citizens. Lester Graham reports in some parts of
the nation, volunteers step in to make sure their local streams and
lakes are clean:

Rochelle Breitenbach and Mary Bajcz are trudging through the snow,
winding their way through a thicket to find a small creek. It’s 14
degrees above zero. And they plan to go wading. They’re lugging in a
fine-mesh net, some hip boots, and an orange 5 gallon bucket of trays and
specimen jars.

Breitenbach says they’re headed for a pristine creek that eventually
becomes a river, the Huron River in southeast Michigan:

“One thing about this spot is that it’s really close to the headwaters
of the Huron River. So, it’s a really good indicator of what they’re
going to find downstream too. This has traditionally been one of the
best spots to collect in the entire watershed.”

They’re just one team of many that take samples up and down the river.
They’re looking for a certain kind of bug, stonefly larvae. Stoneflies
are good fish food and they are very susceptible to pollution. They’re
considered an indicator species. If stoneflies are there and healthy,
it’s a good indication the stream is healthy:

“Their food source is on decomposing leaves, so that’s
where you find them. And then, I will get some of the leaf packs in
the net and then I’ll dump it in the tray. And then we’ll add a little
warm water so they don’t freeze. And then we’ll sort through the leaf
packs and then look for stoneflies.”

Breitenbach cautiously makes her way down the bank, across the ice and
into the water.

She’s taking her first sample in this open water. Bajcz steps out onto
the ice, holding a plastic tray so Breitenbach can empty the net’s contents
into the plastic tray. But… the ice can’t take the weight.

Luckily Bajcz did not fall into the water. In these temperatures, that
would have been bad. They scramble up the snowy bank and start
sorting through the debris in the trays to find stonefly larvae.

Stoneflies have two tails. Mayflies have three tails. So, they’re
squinting to see what they’ve got:

Mary: “Oh, there’s one! Right there. Right, Rochelle? That one?”

Rochelle: “I left my glasses in the car.”

Mary: “Okay. I’m going to collect it. I think it is.”

Rochelle: Yes, go ahead and take it.”

Mary: “Oh look! That’s a mayfly. Three.”

Rochelle: “Yeah, see all the tails.”

Mary: “Look at that one! That’s two. That’s got two. See?”

Rochelle: “Yep.”

Mary: “Wow. (whisper) That’s gigantic.”

Rochelle: “That’s why we love this site (laughs).”

Once they find one, they drop the bug into a jar of alcohol. After the
thrill of finding the stoneflies, they hate to kill them, but they have
to preserve the samples for biologists.

Rochelle: “The whole jar goes back and Jo goes through and identifies
everything.”

Jo is Jo Latimore. She’s the Huron River Watershed Council’s
ecologist. She says without the volunteers’ efforts all along the
river, they’d never be able to monitor this river system as well, but
there are drawbacks to using volunteers.

“The first impression is that volunteer data may not be as trustworthy
as anyone else’s, any trained professional’s data. But, our volunteers
have been trained and then we also do quality control checks, just like
the government would do with their agencies where we’ll go out side-by-
side and send professionals out with the volunteers and compare their
results to make sure that they’re trustworthy.”

Latimore says the end result of volunteer surveys like this one is a
steady monitoring program that fills in the blanks left by government
agencies that can’t do the work.

“The agencies that do have the responsibility for checking the quality
of our waterbodies really have very limited budgets, very limited
staff. For example, in Michigan, the professional biologist from the
DEQ can only get to a particular watershed every five years. And to
really be able to stay on top of the conditions in a stream, you need
to monitor more often than that.”

Voluntary watershed organizations all across the nation assist government agencies in
monitoring the streams and lakes. But in many parts of the nation,
there are no volunteer agencies. The water quality is rarely checked,
and the only time anyone realizes there’s a problem is when there’s a
huge fish kill or other pollution problems that get the attention of
people who live nearby or people who fish the streams. And nearly
everyone agrees that’s not a very good way to keep water clean.